


You Heard the Murmur

by heartstone



Series: The One That Needed It Most [4]
Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Fluff, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Love Confessions, Loyalty, M/M, Moving On
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-13
Updated: 2020-03-13
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:22:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23130886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartstone/pseuds/heartstone
Summary: Two parts of Annatar were pulling unbearably on one another as if to unravel him, competing for the mastery of his frayed heart-strings to puppet them to whatever end they purposed.***Annatar's heart is torn in two.
Relationships: Annatar/Celebrimbor | Telperinquar, Celebrimbor | Telperinquar/Sauron | Mairon, Melkor/Mairon is in Past, Morgoth Bauglir | Melkor/Sauron | Mairon
Series: The One That Needed It Most [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1646590
Comments: 6
Kudos: 72





	You Heard the Murmur

LXIV

(Poem Excerpt by Pablo Neruda)

***

My life was tinted purple by so much love,

and I veered helter-skelter like a blinded bird

till I reached your window, my friend:

you heard the murmur of a broken heart.

There from the shadows I rose to your breast:

without being or knowing, I flew up the towers of wheat,

I surged to life in your hands,

I rose from the sea to your joy.

***

He was only distantly aware that he was falling asleep: an indistinct sensation of the vibrancy of his consciousness blurring into the vivid shadow of sleep. He recalled himself— wasn’t he doing something important?— and his mind slowly, reluctantly, dragged itself out of the haze of his half-formed dreams. The muted awareness of his body still clung to the beginnings of his fanciful imaginings of the mundane sounds around him as they were filtered through the subliminal grey of his doze. It was as if the sounds around him solidified from some misty abstraction of thought to their typical interpretations: that creak he heard was the wood frame of the chaise protesting the slight shift in his weight, the pop was the log in the hearth, and the soft rustling were the ivy-leaves as they brushed against the window-glass.

Tyelpë opened his eyes, his recall gradually restored: it was late evening and the candles burned bright around him, surrounding him in a friendly glow like many slender flickering suns. He sunk into the eiderdown like fluffy midsummer clouds, pressed against them by the warm weight of the body curled next to him. A muffled laughter vibrated his chest as he blinked down groggily, meeting a bowed halo of long red curls and two eyes of honey-gold, overbrimming with the sweetness of his teasing mirth. Ah, yes. They had been reading together.

“Where’s the book gone off to?” he asked, looking around in a poor attempt at trying to regain some of his dignity. But the slight huskiness of sleep had not yet left his throat and he knew he appeared rather more absurd as he broke off into a large yawn.

Annatar laughed again, a light sound that fluttered up to tickle his ears. “It slipped from your hands a few moments ago and now lies in shame upon the floor. Dejected, I should think, that you found it only engrossing enough for seven of its pages before you were quite overcome with your nap!”

“Dejected?” Tyelpë replied in mock offense, tucking one of the Maia’s curls behind his ear. “Rather it was just as exhausted as I was, fitting more in seven pages than most others do in seventy.”

They both chuckled and Annatar leaned up towards him to kiss him, dragging the blanket along with him and bringing with its fabric the heat that he imparted to it. His lips were soft as he brushed over Tyelpë’s lightly, light enough that it seemed as if he was afraid to touch him, to give him the full desire of pressure and heat that he would drink devoutly. He cupped the Maia’s jaw in the strangeness of the contrast between his confident laughter and the sudden apprehension of his lips to their accustomed spot over his own. But he did not close that final aching gap between them. Their breath spilled over their tingling lips, and the gold of Annatar's eyes were molten in the regard of twinkling grey.

“Anna?” Tyelpë whispered, thumb tracing the contours of the face he cradled.

Something in his eyes shifted, something far, far down into the depths. It was like a groaning of the earth below the sea which sent larger waves to roll along the shores. Tyelpë’s fingers quivered as he brushed by his burning cheek, resonating with the tremble that ran through the Maia and shuddered down his spine. Two arms abruptly threw themselves about his shoulders and a face buried itself in his neck as the aftershock of this sudden change crashed down upon them both. Confused, Tyelpë clung onto him like they were suddenly submerged in water and he was there to keep them from drowning. But Annatar seemed to regain some of himself, pressing many flurries of kisses along his neck vehemently, withholding none of the zeal he had been unable to give earlier to his lips.

He was whispering against his neck and Tyelpë could not understand, for it was entwined with the many kisses that he draped over him like little pearl necklaces. But he became louder and more insistent, and when Tyelpë pushed aside the thick curls of his hair he could tell some of those precious beads were not the wetness of his kisses, but the droplet-cut of fine crystal tears.

“I love you,” he said, over and over, pouring it out from his lips like a revelation. “I love you.”

Tyelperinquar felt a stillness come upon him. The kind that finds one at unawares and makes the world about seem suddenly new and frightfully beautiful. It closed upon him with warmth that came from within rather than without: a heat that surged from inside of his chest and spilled within him, flowing from his skin and evaporating into the air. Any remnant of sleep that had been left to him was banished and what was left was a clear vision of overwhelming joy: that Annatar would speak those words to him at last and that he should say them with the absolute certainty that they were true.

But Annatar was crying in the strange way that was both a delight and a torment, a sort-of half laughter and half sob that choked him and made his chest shake with the force of his inconsistent sharp breaths. He was at war with himself even as he was surrendering.

“I love you, and I thought I couldn’t.” His voice was strangled, pale in quality. “I thought that whatever I felt was just— just an interlude.”

He grabbed onto Tyelpë’s hand as if he could feel the twisting sting that grappled his heart at those words, however reluctant they were to be spoken. They held onto each other tightly then.

“I am sorry.” He repeated it over and over, as if those words came along with his breath. Tyelpë had the strange sensation that some of those pleads were meant for him and the others were said to the shadows that lingered beyond the candlelight. “But now that I know,” he continued, voice cracking slightly, “I feel like I am betraying _Him_ and I don’t know what to do. I feel like I am stuck in some horrid abeyance, caught between leaving and staying. How am I to love you both, remaining loyal to one without betraying the other?”

_Him._ A thousand currents seemed to pull him in a thousand directions and his skin tingled, overwhelmed as each vanguard of emotion criss-crossed their waves over each other like ripples of rain droplets scattering their long fall into patterns on a pool. The intensity of joy at his confession merged to larger waves with the ache he felt at Annatar’s despair, with his desire to comfort that merged with the struggle within him to reconcile that the love Annatar had been so miserably grieved of losing had been for that of the Black Foe Himself, root of all the hurts that grew on Arda. He long stayed quiet in his thought, stroking the curls of cochineal and saffron, trying to maintain his breath for them both.

_Betraying the other._ Tyelpë distanced himself from the identity of that _other_ for further reflection later, taking a step back from the messy tangle of his conflicting emotions. The desire to comfort won out in him, as always it had, now only focusing on the cause of Annatar's hurt. Was loving another after one's first love was gone truly a betrayal? Such a situation was uncommon amongst the elves— despite the losses they had all endured— and it seemed likely to be uncommon amongst the Maiar as well. He sighed gently, wiping away the slight dampness on Annatar’s cheeks, unsure if his winding thoughts would be helpful but nevertheless determined.

“I saw Great-Grandmother once when I was little,” Tyelpë began. “I went with Grandfather and saw the grief of his face as he looked down upon her and I remember wondering to myself: how could Great-Grandfather ever move on from her, from the one he had sworn to love until Arda be broken? It was always unspoken in my House those days: why couldn’t Finwë be content with fathering the son she had given up everything for?”

Annatar trembled, visage a contortion of pain, as if he was but confirming his own terrible thoughts. But Tyelpë continued quickly after wrapping his arms around his shoulders under the cocoon of the blanket, pressing him close to his chest as if in a pressure about his body to staunch the tears from the Maia’s eyes, to stop his racing thoughts from tripping down the deepest pits of his fears.

“But I am now repelled by that judgement,” Tyelpë continued. “Should we linger on forever in mourning? If we had, then Ost-in-Edhil would not have been built and we’d still be clustered refugees on the shores, lamenting the ruin of Beleriand! Instead, I would have the fair memory of those things long past be reflected in Eregion, in honour and in transformation at once. Moreover—“ he paused, thinking about what he was to say. “Moreover, I do not think that Míriel would desire that eternal loneliness out of Finwë. Would she not rather him have peace in the long years that are left of him to endure without her?”

He moved his hand in concentric circles to massage the Maia’s tense back, small tight rings against the knot of muscle between his shoulders, spiraling into larger orbits that brushed gently against his arms and neck, and trailed along the ridges of his back. He ran his fingers along the hair of his nape, looking down at him carefully to show the small glints of silver sincerity shining forth from his eyes.

“I do not think the love he had for Indis ever took away his love of Míriel. I do not think that such a thing is a betrayal. I have come to think of the Fëa as fathomless: in its capabilities and its depth of expression. You could love something so full to bursting that it is impossible to find that love’s beginning or end within yourself. And yet. . . because the Fëa is eternal— infinite— still there is room to love other things just as fully.”

Annatar’s face was pressed into his breastbone, shoulders quivering as if caught in the criss-crossing of his own conflicting currents of emotion just like Tyelpë had been _(still was)_ caught up in himself. Two parts of Annatar were pulling unbearably on one another as if to unravel him, competing for the mastery of his frayed heart-strings to puppet them to whatever end they purposed. It was as if they were strangling him, tremors of needle-thin terror raked through him in the struggle.

His small voice crumbled Tyelpë like a breeze that was frightfully empty of warmth, having surrendered to winter.

“If it isn’t disloyalty, then why is it so unbearable? That He is alone and hurt and I—“ Annatar stopped then, voice fading away, and he tucked his face back against the fabric of Tyelpë’s clothes as if to shelter.

His reply was easy: “It hurts because you love Him.” But Tyelpë knew that it wouldn’t be enough. Would Morgoth rather His Maia find peace in the long years that were left of him to endure onwards? Or would He desire him to fight on, to continue His futile war? Tyelpë would have thought the latter and a part of him was still doubtful, except. . .

“What was His last command to you?”

Annatar froze, hands clutching him tighter. He had spoken of Melkor many times to Tyelpë, but it was only recently that the elf knew His identity— about as recent as he knew the Maia’s own identity. It was another thing that had terrified him to tell, but he hadn’t left him when he knew who he was and he could no longer hide the most important part of himself. He had broken down, unable to hold back the repression of the memory of the agony of their parting at the end of the War of Wrath. For those final few moments, Mairon had glimpsed for the first time in centuries the one that he had loved— _Melkor—_ as opposed to Morgoth that he resented. It was Melkor, not Morgoth, had commanded him to flee, to save himself by whatever means possible from death and capture. He couldn’t ever forgive himself for obeying that command as He had pushed him away, ordering him to leave Him behind.

“It does not seem like He had any desire that you should suffer with Him,” Tyelpë whispered gently, kissing his forehead. “Let your happiness bring Him forth from your best memories, instead of your grief recalling only those of His worst. Only you knew who He was as someone other than Morgoth. If that is what you choose to carry on. . .”

Tyelpë kissed his forehead again, lingering there long as if to impart the eternity of his adoration.

“He will not be betrayed,” he said at last. “And neither will I.”

**Author's Note:**

> Something about this work makes me hesitant to post it. Perhaps they are too out of character. I thought I would anyways because I had the dialogue in my head and I crave some softness. I hope you can enjoy reading it.  
> I wrote about Melkor and Mairon's final parting at the War of Wrath in a work titled "And That Is Eternity."  
> ***


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